by Tony Dutzik – Huffington Post
A few years ago, a strange thing happened: Americans started driving less.
How strange was it? For 60 years, up until 2005, the number of miles driven on America’s roads increased by an average of 3.7 percent per year – that’s more than twice as fast as population growth. Today, however, Americans are driving just about as much as we did six years ago overall. And on a per-capita basis, as researchers from the Brookings Institution have pointed out, the number of miles driven actually peaked a decade ago.
As President Obama and Congress debate infrastructure investments – both as part of the president’s jobs strategy and the ongoing debate over reauthorization of the transportation bill – it is important to know whether the trend away from ever-increasing amounts of driving is real or a temporary blip. If the trend is real, it would suggest that our transportation policies – the broad outlines of which were established when "Leave It to Beaver" was on TV and America still produced most of its own oil – need a serious rewrite for the 21st century.
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Some cultural observers suggest that these trends are part of a larger generational shift – one in which digital connectivity trumps horsepower, and iPads and Androids take the place of an earlier generation’s ’57 Chevys as symbols of consumer aspiration and freedom.
Other factors are at work as well. The easy mortgage credit that once financed the construction of McMansions in auto-oriented exurbs is gone.
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Gasoline prices aren’t going down any time soon. And more Americans continue to look for opportunities to walk or bike where they need to go – both to save money and to enjoy better health.
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Why then is Washington arguing about how much to spend building our grandfather’s transportation network?
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Fixing our existing roads, bridges and transit infrastructure is a good place to start. Yet, federal and state policies often serve to incentivize the construction of new highway capacity over the less-glamorous task of taking care of what we have.
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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-dutzik/iin-the-public-interesti_b_962453.htmloldId.20110915154503680
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